Well obviously one of the top reasons is control for Apple, nothing can be done here. From the consumer perspective, and I could be biased because I have a ton

Well obviously one of the top reasons is control for Apple, nothing can be done here. From the consumer perspective, and I could be biased because I have a ton of apple's hardware, I see trouble when making a dock. From my experience with microUSB it's fragile, you can sway it by pulling not exactly right, you will have to aim every time you put something in dock. Where as with new connector you don't have to aim - it will slide in, it will easily slide out because of locking mechanism.